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(Pages 455-456)

Ladejin

(Ladyzhyn, Ukraine)

Edited by Yocheved Klausner

The date of the occupation by the Germans/Romanians was 24th July 1941.

In the summer of 1942 a group of 600 deportees was brought to Ladejin from the neighboring camp, Cariera De Piatră. These were Jews from Cernauţi and Dorohoi County. They had been deported in June and July of the same year. Many of them were of the liberal professions, and when they arrived they met 75 others (craftsmen) who were also sent from Cariera De Piatră previously. They were all housed in a demolished building which was once a school, and was now surrounded by barbed wire. We slept on the ground.

The Commander of the Gendarmerie appointed as head of the camp Dr. Camillo Harth, today the writer Peter Duhr, who later settled in Germany. He, along with another three deportees, made up the Jewish committee. With money they collected from the other deportees they organized a soup kitchen that every day provided a meal for the needy. The peasants would come up to the barbed wire and give food in exchange for items. Next to the camp was a well. With boards and straw that they received from the peasants the deportees boarded up the windows, which had no glass.

The guarding of the camp was extremely strict. Romanian Gendarmerie and Ukrainian police were always on guard, and twice a day the residents of the camp had to come out to be counted. During the morning inspection, Germans would come from the other side of the river Bug and take men and women to work in the German work camps. These workers would return at night with no strength and shaking from tiredness. Sometimes the soldiers would abuse the inmates. Once a soldier poured a bucket of boiling water - purely for amusement  on the legs of a woman who was working in the laundry. Despite the aid given by the Jewish doctors, she remained disabled in both legs.

On the 18th of August 1942, with the coming of dawn, suddenly a unit of the German SS arrived at the camp, at the command of Obersturmfuhrer Christoffel and Oberscharfurer Mass. The camp was immediately surrounded by Lithuanian soldiers and the SS men returned to the buildings, guns drawn. After a thorough search, they took all the inmates out. On the street, some trucks belonging to the German Todt company were waiting. The 'selection' then took place by the SS commander and the Gendarmerie, according to the list held by Dr Hart. 130 were chosen according to an unknown criterion. They were left in the camp. 550 others were placed on the truck and taken to the side of the river. They were told they were going to work for the Todt Company for two months. Before the women and children were loaded up onto the trucks, they would undergo a check of their items and their papers. The men had to cross the river by swimming; they were of all ages, from 6 months to 91 years.

On the other side of the river they were once again loaded onto trucks, escorted by the SS soldiers, soldiers of the Wehrmacht, and also people from Todt and Vomi, and they drove off to the work camps of Michajlowka, Tarassiwka, Gaisin, Teplik, Iwangorod

1500 Jews were also transferred from Cariera De Piatră, 800 from Cetvertinovca (who had been moved from Cariera De Piatră earlier that year) close to 3,000 all together were sent to German work camps.

In Ladejin only 130 Jews remained. A few hundred were eventually added from Cariera De Piatră, as well as another 250 Ukranians who had been deported from other places. In 1942, another 550 were taken away, based on the requests of the Germans 'over the river' to the Crasno Polka camp. 250 of them were Ukranian Jews. The last remaining inmates were taken by the Germans in December of the same year. There only remained a few families for whom  fortunately for them  there was simply no room in the trucks. They were later moved to Cariera De Piatră, where a small number of deportees remained.